Right Speech, Free Speech, Open Debate, and Justice in Public Discourse

This discussion comes under the umbrella of "Right Speech" in the Buddha Dharma.

The recent statement in Harper’s entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” (hereafter "the Letter") is a fine example of the axiom, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  The gaggle of 153 prominent celebrities, writers, and academics appear to have had the good intentions to sign onto an innocuous statement in support of the good old American virtue of free speech.  However, the public responses to the Letter have raised many necessary questions about several aspects, including whether or not they all knew who else was signing the Letter or who was curating the signatures.

Though the Letter doesn't explicitly use the term "cancel culture," everyone responding to the Letter takes it as a given that this is the topic of the letter. In general, the Letter lacks the basics of any definitions of its terms or specifics for its examples. 

The hypocrisy of many of the co-signers has been addressed, my favorite is in Aaron Mate's program Push Back interviewing Max Blumenthal with the title "'Cancel Culture' hypocrites cancel open debate and foreigncountries"   

Some of the falsehoods and failed arguments of the Letter are well reviewed by Michael Hobbes in his HuffPost article “Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam.”   

As part of his System Update program, Glenn Greenwald, as usual, has provided an astute oral essay on the topic titled "Elites are Distorting the 'Cancel Culture' Crisis"  that explores the essential context of elitism, the lack of a useful definition of the terms of the discussion, and the misleading claim that there is something new about the phenomenon.  Greenwald also wrote a 7,000 word article in The Intercept on the issue, "How 'Cancel Culture' Repeatedly Emerged in My Attempt to Make a Film About Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova."    

Socialist philosopher Ben Bergis presents what he calls a left perspective in his talk "What the Left Should Think About Cancel Culture”  In his somewhat rambling talk, Bergis presents his definition of cancel culture which he rightly points out would be more precisely termed as“denunciation culture” or “public shaming culture."  

[Addendum 7/20/2020: Just read another good response by Nesrine Malik published in The Guardian titled "The 'cancel culture' war is really about old elites losing power in the social media age"  She also discusses the point that this is not a new phenomenon for the internet and has as much to do with the internet itself than anything else. The gist of her well observed essay is "In a way, cancel culture has existed for a long time, but the panic around it is renewed every time walls between discourse-makers and discourse-consumers are lowered."]

My first response was that I could tell immediately that the Letter was a liberal scam when there was no mention of Julian Assange in a letter ostensibly about free speech, justice, and open debate. Why Noam Chomsky and Zephyr Teachout allowed themselves to be played by people behind this hoax to let their names be associated with the Letter is not known to me.  

The Letter contains no discussion or identification of where the line is between justified and unjustified criticism. There is no delineation of the lines between valid and invalid consequences for justified criticisms. These blatant lacks within the Letter demonstrate that the Letter is simply an obfuscation of the issues, not an attempt to coherently address them. 

In these responses two attempts at a definition by academics are provided.  

(1),Greenwald presents the definition by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, “It’s a social system of ideological control in which online mobs are roused by outrage to appeal to authorities (gov’t, employers, mass media) to ruin someone’s life because they’ve said something ‘offensive.’” 

(2) Bergis defines "the problem" of cancel culture: "if we are going to try to precisely define what we are talking about here, when people point to cancel culture what they are typically pointing to is actually an interrelated cluster of trends towards mutual surveillance and hair trigger denunciation in public shaming that have different levels of impact in different political subcultures and other subcultures and in the larger culture.”

Neither definition is particularly helpful.  Miller uses the pejorative term "mobs" to undermine any justification of the criticism as part of the definition. in other words, cancel culture is always bad and by definition can not be valid.  Bergis' definition is to vague to be helpful to the discussion and is also predetermined to always be a negative phenomenon.  Is considered denunciation not part of cancel culture but only hair trigger denunciation, and then where is the line to be drawn?  What is valid in both attempts to define the problem is that it is a social phenomenon with a public shaming aspect used for ideological control by piety and orthodoxy. This recognizes that there is absolutely nothing new in the current phenomenon of what is conventionally called cancel culture other than the superficial illusion of newness by the newness of internet social media being a large part of the current context for the mass communications.   

Sentence by sentence commentary

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

“Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial.”

This is a false beginning.  Our cultural institutions have never faced moments without trial.  Beyond non-fiction analysis in politics, philosophy, and psychology such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, fiction literature is full of examples putting our cultural institutions on trial, for example, 1984, Brave New World, The Lottery, The Crucible, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, etc.

“Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts.”

This sentence endorses a false claim.  There is nothing “overdue” about the demands, which have been made for centuries.  These previously and long unheard demands have led to the protests in frustration as a practical way to be heard.  The protests are merely what was needed for most of the signers of the letter to get out of their liberal bubbles of thinking that most things are okay.

“But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”

This is another false claim of “a new set” of x, y, & z that “tend to weaken our norms of open debate.”  Demands for ideological conformity, i.e., “cancel culture,” are as old as ideology and culture themselves.  The aforementioned literature shows indisputably there is nothing new about the weakness of out norms of open debate, because those norms have traditionally and historically been so very weak.  The corporate mainstream media routinely and rigidly closes down open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. Whether it is dissenting voices to military invasions are critiques of capitalism and the corporate control of the media, there is very little debate outside the narrowing defined Overton Window enforced by the million-dollar per year paid spokespersons called news hosts.

“As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second.”

Claiming to applaud protests and to speak against a nonexistent “new” backlash is to misinform and gas light the reader.

“The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.”

This is false Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Presidents Obama, Bush II, Clinton Bush I, and Reagan were all representatives and powerful allies of the same illiberalism throughout the world and all presented a real threat to democracy.   Their issue with Trump is that he speaks openly about what the other presidents kept on the down low.

“But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting.”

This is another form of gas lighting because there is no “resistance” from liberals who have approved every war-mongering initiative by the presidents since Reagan.  This misinforms people by implying there are no centrist neoliberal demagogues such as Obama, Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi. Their dogmas are just as exploitative as the right-wing dogmas.

“The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.”

Another false claim that an intolerant climate has somehow recently “set in,” as if it has not been present all along. This consistent misrepresentation is part of the disinformation campaign behind this Letter.

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

If the signers of the Letter sincerely want democratic inclusion and free exchange of information, then let them provide examples of their denunciations of the prosecution of Julian Assange in a letter ostensibly about free speech, justice, and open debate. Only a small handful of the signatories can do that. That Assange and the intolerant climate of his treatment is not mentioned, shows the Letter’s context of free speech advocacy is a hoax.

“While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

Again, ad nauseam, there is nothing new going on here. This dissolve of complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty widely reigned supreme over the USA culture in both moderate right, centrist, and left circles for 20 years in what has been called the McCarthy era. This censoriousness has reigned over the nearly 20 years of the war in Afghanistan as revealed in the Afghanistan Papers that made merely a momentary blip on the radar of the corporate media with no apologies from the corporate media for lying all these years.  Many other examples may be cited.

“We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.”

They say they do, but again most of them have no receipts to show for it.  Many people responding to this letter have listed the many signatories to it who have clearly signed their names with no shame for their hypocrisy.  Many have been at the forefront of cancellation culture with their denunciations of any speech criticizing the apartheid state of Israel and smearing such criticism as anti-Semitic.

“But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

More fallacy argument.  There is nothing “now” about it except that now the elites who signed this letter are forced to hear the calls from others when they had previously reserved that right to themselves.  Calls for severe retribution are themselves example of free speech, even “caustic counter speech,” so do they support the right to make such calls or not.  Clearly, they are claiming to support such calls while implying that such calls are beyond the pale and should be cancelled.

“More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.”

There is nothing new under the sun about how institutional leaders react to actual or potential public outcry.  In the first 48 years of the FBI, Director J. Edgar Hoover took for granted his right to influence institutional leaders to cancel the employment of anyone who was a homosexual or communist by threatening to let it be known publicly.   

“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.”

These examples are vague and mostly debunked.  No editor was “fired for running controversial pieces.”  In this example, the editor was fired for approving for print controversial pieces they never read before authorizing them. 

Books that are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity are only problematic if the publisher withdraws them without investigation of the allegation. I know of no such examples, and to the contrary, most publishers print such books hoping the controversy will provide profits.

That journalists are barred from writing on certain topics is as old as journalism. The corporate publishers routinely bar journalists from writing on certain topics, such as against war and regime change interventions. If anything is new, it is only the contours of the boundary lines of which topics are included by any particular profit-centered publisher.  

Professors should be investigated when complaints are made, and as is the case in this example, the investigation upheld the professor.

The researcher who was fired was fired after his peers condemned him, not based on social media from non-academics.   

Heads of organizations are not ever ousted for what are simply “just clumsy mistakes.” This is a red herring.

“Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.”

This is another logical fallacy. If the arguments about the particular incidents are false, then the claim of the result is also false.  There is no evidence at all of such a steady narrowing of the boundaries of what can be said without threat of reprisal.  Throughout history, the boundary of what can be said moves with the winds of change and the signs of the times. This is the nature of the mass consciousness of societies.  

“We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”

This is another bogus argument because every one of the elite writers, artists, and journalists who signed the Letter have made their livelihoods in direct relationship with the consensus, either by complying with it, as in the case of David Brooks and David Frum, or, as in the case of Noam Chomsky, in departing from it.     

“This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.”

Since this stifling atmosphere has existed in American culture from the beginning, it has already harmed most of the vital causes of our times.  The vital causes of Martin Luther King, Jr. were harmed by this stifling atmosphere in his time. There can be no greater cancellation than assassination.

“The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”

Again, the signers to this Letter have in the majority been cheerleaders for our regressive government and intolerant society restricting those who lack power.  By creating the false illusion that this restriction of debate is something new the Letter is gas lighting the public with disinformation.

“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”

This is a truism that has been made by every open minded free thinking person since the dawn of human culture.  In the USA, for example, this argument was the clarion call of Thomas Paine in Common Sense, not because it was accepted in 1776 when published but because it wasn’t.  As John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain" But in the years since, the spirit of Common Sense has been adopted in the exceptions, like Mark Twain, not in the rule of the likes of the Hearsts, Murdochs, and Bezos and their corporate counterparts like Comcast.

“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.”

This is another truism, that the signatories have in the majority failed to live by. As a truism, it has nothing to say about the particular issue attempting to be raised by the Letter. Specifically, most of the signatories have had very little if anything to say about the injustices of the Patriot Act, Obama’s ending of habeas corpus, CIA Black Sites, drone assassinations, mass surveillance, etc. all done in the name of securing freedom. If they have, then show us the receipts.

“As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.”

Yes, again, a worthy platitude that most of the signers have taken advantage of for themselves and now only speak up because they are afraid of their own power being diminished.

“We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”

This is another platitude without any good-faith definition of what is a “good-faith disagreement” as opposed to a bad-faith disagreement that should have dire professional consequences. In the lifetimes of all the signers to the Letter, they have never had any dire professional consequences from good-faith disagreement. In fact, they have defined the question of whether the disagreement is good-faith or bad-faith by the consequences, not by the terms of the disagreement itself.

“If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.”

Again, mostly they do not defend the very thing on which their work depends because they do not defend Julian Assange.  In the most part, they do not challenge the exclusion of journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Abby Martin, Max Blumenthal, et al. from the mainstream corporate media. Instead they write for and appear in the corporate media taking advantage of their elite privilege keeping well within the consensus limitations of allowable discourse and opinions imposed by the powerful in society.